


Force + Recovery

by TetrodotoxinB



Series: Whumptober 2020 [31]
Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: Day 31, Post-whipping, Recovery, Scars, Whipping, Whumptober 2020, post-torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:28:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27311905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TetrodotoxinB/pseuds/TetrodotoxinB
Summary: As Mac heals from his very brief stint in a desert prison, Jack learns that doesn't have all the facts.
Series: Whumptober 2020 [31]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1947493
Comments: 21
Kudos: 59
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	Force + Recovery

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Force + Violence](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21244727) by [impossiblepluto](https://archiveofourown.org/users/impossiblepluto/pseuds/impossiblepluto). 



> This is inspired by [ImpossiblePluto](https://archiveofourown.org/users/impossiblepluto/pseuds/impossiblepluto)'s FANTASTIC story [Force + Violence](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21244727). This takes place after Pluto's story and will make much more sense if you read it. That said, you're in for a treat if you haven't read it because Pluto's a terrific author and this is one of my favorite stories.
> 
> Many thanks to [aravenwood](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aravenwood/pseuds/aravenwood) for her extreme kindness in being willing to beta all of these whumptober fills! Especially so since she's also writing her own (amazing!) fics too! Please go check her out and give her some love!!!

Every time Jack closes his eyes he can see Mac’s back— the fresh, still seeping wounds; the angry scabs and stitches that popped as the swelling increased beyond expectation; the infections and Mac’s tears when Jack had to reopen and clean the wounds himself when Mac wouldn’t go back to medical. Jack still wakes up more nights than not with the image of Mac crumpled to the dusty ground burned into his eyelids. 

But for all that Jack had seen of Mac’s back at the outset, it’s been more than a month since Mac’s let Jack so much as see him without a shirt. Jack knows he’s ashamed, knows he’s self-conscious, knows that Mac thinks he’s weak or vulnerable, probably both, since he’s still not cleared for field work. 

It’s also not lost on Jack that all the easily removable mirrors in the house have suddenly vanished, and the bathroom medicine cabinet stays open so that the mirror faces the wall. Not that Jack’s gonna comment on it or anything, but he knows Mac’s hiding — from himself, from Jack, from everyone. 

“Jack, can you get me that new roll of solder behind you on the end table?”

Jack blinks, the private cinema of blood and suffering he had been audience to in his mind collapses under the pressure of the present moment, and he turns to the end table.

“You know we gotta leave in a couple minutes if you’re gonna get to PT on time,” Jack points out, handing over the coil of metal.

Mac sighs. “Yeah, I know. I just want to get these last couple of resistors in place before we go.”

“Yeah, alright,” Jack concedes.

*****

Jack catches up on his subscription to National Enquirer and beats another couple levels of Bejeweled by the time Mac emerges from the clinic. He’s walking slower and his jaw is set. Jack doesn’t know what they’ve been doing different lately, but he’s got half a mind to call the clinic and tell them to ease off. Mac’s been quieter and more angry after his appointments, not to mention obviously in more pain, since the beginning of last week. 

Jack’s been through PT before, and he knows how horrible it can be, but lifting weights and doing stretches shouldn’t get Mac all twisted up like this. Something’s wrong.

*****

“Jack Dalton.” Matty’s voice makes Jack cringe because he knows this tone all too well. 

“Matty. How can I help you?”

“Why is Mac’s physical therapy clinic calling the Phoenix to authorize home health visits?” she snips.

Jack’s brow furrows. “Uh, I don’t know. Mac hasn’t said anything to me.”

“Well, according to them, Mac lives alone and doesn’t have anyone to help him with 'scar mobilization massage,'” Matty accuses.

Jack puts his hands up, phone tucked between his cheek and his shoulder. She can probably see his hands raised in supplication and surrender from her office so it can’t hurt. “Now hold up there, boss lady. I definitely do live with Mac, have been since... you know. And I don’t know anything about this whole ‘home health’ nonsense. I take Mac to all his appointments.”

“Do you go inside with him?” Matty presses.

“Well, no, but-”

“Find out why Mac is lying to the clinic staff and sort this out. I’m trusting you to watch my best agent, not abet him in insurance fraud.” Before Jack can promise to take care of it, Matty cuts the call. 

Jack finds himself standing on the back deck wondering what in the hell is going on with Mac. It’s not like him to lie but then there’s a lot going on that’s not quite right — the mirrors, the anger, the quiet, and now the lying. A lot happened to Mac in that desert prison, but Jack's realizing now that what he saw was only the surface.

*****

They’re late. To be fair, Jack may or may not have had Mac search the entire house for the keys to the GTO while they were in Jack’s pocket the entire time. It also may or may not have been intentional. Details. 

Jack whips the GTO into the clinic parking lot, pulling right up to the front doors as he makes up for deliberately lost time. “See you in an hour?” 

Mac nods, grimacing as he opens the door. “Yep. Hopefully they won’t cancel because I’m late.”

Jack watches Mac, how slowly he moves as he tries to clear the door, and Jack almost forgets to respond. “Nah, man. I’m sure they’ll understand. Just make sure to tell them what an idiot I am and it’ll be fine,” he stumbles out at the last second, hoping he doesn’t seem too distracted.

Mac huffs a small sound, almost a laugh though he doesn’t do much of that anymore, and shuts the door behind himself. Jack pulls around, parks the car, and counts to ten before picking up Mac’s forgotten wallet. Well, not forgotten per se, more like Jack lifted it from Mac’s pocket as they were leaving the house. Whatever.

When Jack hustles into the clinic, Mac is still signing in. 

“Hey, you left your wallet,” Jack says, getting Mac’s attention. 

Mac smiles a little thinly. “Thanks, Jack. They were just asking for my insurance card again.”

Jack chuckles. "Every third visit."

The receptionist snorts in amusement. "Insurance loves to play games. You know how it is."

Jack is about to launch into a time wasting story about one of the many times his insurance "played games," when a door opens and a man in scrubs calls Mac's name. Quickly, Jack makes his way to intercept the man before he and Mac disappear. 

“Hey, I’m Jack, Mac’s temporary roommate,” he says, extending his hand towards the man who Jack hopes is Mac’s physical therapist and not just some orderly. 

“Nice to meet you, Jack. I’m Greg, Mac’s physical therapist. I’ve heard a lot about you,” the man — Greg — says, shaking Jack’s hand. 

_Perfect._ “All good, I’m sure,” Jack says with a chuckle. “Well, anyway, I’m gonna go wait in the car, don’t wanna get in y’all’s way or anything. Besides I need to rest up, Mac and I got big plans for late this week.”

Greg’s eyes widen slightly and he smiles. “Oh do tell.”

“Ah, nah, man. I’m just kidding. I’ll just sit on the sofa and occasionally hand Mac tools while he makes little doohickeys and thingamjigs. Perks of being off work for the foreseeable future.”

Greg chuckles and shakes his head. “Dude, that sounds awesome. I could use a vacation. How long are you gonna be off? I know you’ve been out of town a lot lately with work; he said you were pretty busy.”

Jack glances at Mac out of the corner of his eye. He looks like a golden retriever who’s been confronted with the evidence that he did indeed eat the sofa cushion. _At least he has the good sense to feel guilty about lying to everyone,_ Jack thinks.

“Nah, I heard that Mac needed more of a hand than he was getting, and ain’t nothing more important in life than Mac, here. But hey, I know we’re burning time, so I’ll go ahead and bug out-”

“Well, I mean if you’re here to help-”

Mac, who has been totally silent thus far, quietly interjects. “Just come on back, Jack.”

Greg must pick up on Mac’s discomfort because the conversation dies entirely after that. 

They pass through the workout area, the place Jack’s most familiar with in PT clinics, and head down a hall. By the time that they stop in a private room, Jack’s got no idea what Mac’s doing at PT because the description of “stretching and exercises” doesn’t really seem to fit with whatever they’re doing in here.

Greg washes his hands while Mac strips his shirt off. Or rather, he spends about thirty seconds wriggling and fighting his shirt before Jack can’t stand the twisted up look of pain on Mac’s face any longer and he helps him out of it. Mac doesn’t exactly protest, but Jack is acutely aware how little Mac wants Jack in his space. As soon as the shirt is clear, Mac turns away from Jack, a further barrier between Mac and the eye contact he still hasn’t made since the waiting room. 

Jack isn’t prepared for what he sees and he nearly chokes. There’s this unspoken agreement with the universe — you get injured and, barring serious complications, you heal. Then things get better, not perfect — god knows Jack has enough scars that he’s learned that much — but Mac’s back isn’t holding up its end of the bargain. Jack expected little pink lines, a thicker mass of scarring towards the center where the lashes had overlapped, maybe some gnarly bits here and there where the infections had been bad, but this... Jack has to take a second and breathe.

Raised, red lines stand out livid against Mac’s pale skin. The worst knots of scar tissue are clearly where Jack reopened and drained infected wounds. Guilt washes over him because what if he’d insisted on Mac going to medical? What if someone with more experience than “was shot a lot in the field” had treated Mac’s wounds? Would it look like this? Would he still hurt so much?

Seemingly oblivious to Jack’s internal crisis, Mac lies face down on the massage table. He flinches only slightly when Greg touches him, but Greg doesn’t comment on it. Jack knows it’s not the first time. 

“So what we’re doing here is a type of medical massage,” Greg explains. “I’m using my hands to stretch the scars in multiple directions. What that’ll do is help create more slack in the scars as they heal with the goal of giving Mac more mobility and a greater range of motion. Plus it can help with nerve regeneration long term, decrease chronic pain, that sort of stuff.”

Jack nods dumbly. Mac’s silent, his breathing even, but Jack watches as Mac’s fingers bunch the sheet where he grips the table. Jack’s got scars and he knows they can be finicky little things. Sometimes they send pain or tingling, sometimes cold or heat, sometimes nothing but numbness, other times a mix of any or all of the above. It can be a lot to handle even when they’re not being touched.

Jack watches and listens as Greg walks him through the steps. All the while Mac is silent, his body perfectly still save for the rise and fall of his back and the bunching of his fingers against the table. Jack doesn’t know what to do with that because it’s not like Mac needs rescuing from this. Mac needed it before, he needed it before the whip ever cracked against his pale Scottish skin. And Jack tried to save Mac from medical once, and now look where it’s gotten them.

Finally, Greg’s done explaining and it’s Jack’s turn to try. Jack’s not scared of Mac’s back, he’s a Delta, he’s not scared of anything. Still, he’s careful as he lays his hands Mac. 

And the scars are… soft? They look raised and angry, and Jack expected them to be hard to the touch. But they feel delicate, almost fragile under his gun calloused hands, and he’s suddenly afraid he might tear them.

In a gesture that would normally elicit a “hey hey man I don’t swing that way” sort of reply, Greg lays his hands over Jack’s, pulling at a particular scar.

“Do you feel that resistance?” Greg asks.

Jack nods, “Yeah.”

“That’s it, man. Just pulling until you find that resistance and then hold. We’re not tearing this free, just giving it a gentle stretch.”

Jack just nods, not trusting his voice. He and Greg work silently on Mac’s back for the rest of the hour. While Greg periodically comments on hang ups in the tissue or asks Mac for input, Jack just counts the lashes. He already knows how many fell — he counted them as they fell and again while he cleaned Mac’s back — but he counts them again anyway, like each one is another mark against him as an overwatch. 

After the third count, Jack finally clears his throat. “Hey, uh, Greg. Maybe this is a dumb question, but there are more scars than I remember?”

Greg nods, as though Jack’s non-question observation was a complete thought. “Not surprised. Sometimes with damage like this-” _torture,_ Jack’s brain helpfully corrects, “-you’ll see scars in places where the skin wasn’t broken. Sometimes the damage is deeper and as it heals the scar tissue creeps its way up to the skin so to speak.”

Jack nods again silently, and keeps stretching the scars. He’s a Delta and he doesn’t cry… at least not in public.

*****

When the hour’s finally up, and what was it Einstein said about sitting on the hot stove with a pretty girl?, Jack and Mac silently follow Greg to the check out desk. He leaves them quietly; their loud, boisterous greeting from their arrival seems like months ago. Quickly, Mac passes his Phoenix issued medical credit card to the receptionist to pay the copay, and then they’re free. Free to do what, Jack isn’t sure, but it feels like some type of freedom.

But in the car, the hurt and the tension clings like warm molasses, and Jack simply sits in the driver’s seat, eyes closed. Mac only tolerates Jack’s self-indulgent repose for about thirty seconds.

“Jack,” he says softly.

Jack nods and opens his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, of course. Let’s get you home.”

*****

Home is not the comfort Jack was hoping for. They need to talk, no two ways about it. But instead of talking, Mac gingerly ambles into the house and then right out to the garage where he keeps the power tools that Bozer won’t let him use in the living room. Jack backtracks out of the living room to follow Mac, but before he even makes it into the kitchen the door to the garage shuts quite decisively. Jack can read between the lines — Mac needs some time alone. Fine. Whatever. But Mac’s had a solid couple of weeks to hide from this. Jack ain’t planning on waiting much longer.

*****

Mac’s finally come out of his hidey hole to sip on a beer on the deck while Jack mans the grill. For the sheer hilarity of it, Jack is grilling spam. Bozer would scream about the sanctity of the grill but also, Mama used to fry spam in a skillet and add it to his mac and cheese when he was a kid. Jack figures that if fried spam is good, then grilled is better.

Jack’s telling Mac as much while he flips their questionable “steaks,” but the effort to ease Mac’s guard enough to have idle conversation fails, so Jack cuts to the chase.

“Do you wanna do tonight’s scar stuff before or after dinner?”

Mac breathes in sharply and rolls the bottle of beer in his fingers. “You had no right to invade my privacy like that.”

“You were lying to your physio guy to get out of daily therapy. You had no right to do that either,” Jack shoots back.

“It’s my body and I can do what I want with it.” Mac’s voice is louder, higher pitched — a mix of anger and fear, bravado to cover his vulnerability.

Jack shakes his head. Mac doesn’t want gentle, he wants to fight like he never got the chance to before. Jack can give him that. “Sure, if you never wanna get out in the field again. Is that what you want?”

Mac leans to set the bottle on the deck and hisses when he moves too fast. “You know I don’t.”

“Then why did you tell them that you lived alone? That you didn’t have anyone to help?” Jack presses, slapping their spam steaks onto their plates and spooning out some store bought slaw alongside it.

“Why were you digging into my medical information?” Mac shoots back, nearly shouting now.

Jack slams the tub of slaw down on the table beside the grill. “I wasn’t. The clinic tried to authorize home health to see you to do the massage every day. Insurance called Matty, and Matty called me to find out why I wasn’t taking care of you,” Jack loudly explains. “I don’t go snooping in your private shit unless there’s a damn good reason, like say you neglecting your own health!”

Mac stands up all at once and Jack only just manages not to visibly cringe at the way Mac’s body jerks when he moves too fast and pain flickers across his face. While Mac looks out over the railing of the deck, his back to Jack, Jack scoops up his plate and sits in his designated Adirondack chair. 

Jack’s stabbing his spam steak with far more force than is strictly necessary given that spam isn’t exactly tough, when he hears Mac.

“I’m just tired of needing people. I’m tired of having to be cared for constantly. I didn’t realize that they’d push the matter,” he explains quietly. .

Jack sets his plate aside and leans forward, elbows on knees. “I get that, man. You’re hurting. It sucks. You wanna be better right now. Hell, anyone who’s ever been hurt wants that. But what are you accomplishing doing it this way, huh? I didn’t make you go to the doc when your back got infected and now those scars are worse than the rest. You want to make the same mistake again? Ignoring what your body needs to heal right, just because doing the work sucks?”

Mac shakes his head. “You don’t get it. I do wanna heal. I do. It’s just… hard.”

“I’ve done PT man. Had both my knees rebuilt before our little vacay to the Sandbox. Tore my elbow in Delta school. Lucky they even let me back in after that. I’ve been blown up and shot and patched back together and I’ve lost count of the times I’ve been through PT, so look I get it. But ignoring the problem ain’t never made anything go away, hoss.”

Mac shakes his head again. “It’s not the pain. It’s…”

And suddenly Jack gets it. “It’s too vulnerable. Letting someone touch you like that doesn’t just hurt your back.”

Jack almost misses Mac’s breathy little, “yeah,” of agreement because it’s so soft. 

“I could promise not to do anything to hurt you but we both know it’s gonna hurt no matter who does it,” Jack declares. 

Mac nods. “Yeah.”

Jack gets to his feet, grabbing both his and Mac’s lukewarm beers, and goes over to the railing. “I think our best course of action is to drink our beers, eat these fabulous Dalton-family-recipe spam-steaks, and then get this on the road. Whaddya say?”

Mac accepts his beer and takes a sip, a small smirk forming at the corner of his mouth. “Yeah, alright. I guess the only thing worse I could have on my back right now is Matty.”

Jack chokes on his beer and stumbles back from the railing. “You’d better watch your tongue. You know she can hear you everywhere.”

Mac shakes his head with a small smile and Jack’s all too happy to follow him when he turns back to the chairs.

*****

Mac can’t lie down comfortably on the sofa and Jack vetoes the kitchen counter before Mac can suggest it. That leaves Mac’s bed and the guest bed, where Jack sleeps. Jack knows that Mac knows that he hasn’t changed the sheets in a fair bit longer than just a week. It’s not even a discussion, Mac just turns and heads toward his bedroom. 

Jack tries to give Mac space, to keep from making this whole thing weird… weirder. But bending over Mac is too much for his old back, and he ends up seated next to Mac on the bed which is definitely “weirder.”

Jack’s had to do weirder stuff in far less comfortable environs because that’s being a Delta. He tries not to consider all the ways he’s uncomfortable — being in another dude’s bed, massaging said dude, digging his fingers into the horrible reminders of Mac’s torture — and instead focus on the task at hand. But Mac’s responses slowly become impossible to ignore.

The finger bunching in the sheets Jack saw at the clinic, but the heavy, uneven breathing is new. While Greg’s eyes were on them, Mac kept a lid on it, but Jack knows that Mac’s finally cracking.

Jack stops massaging and rubs his palm slowly across Mac’s back. “Hey, bud. I think we both need a break.”

Mac shakes his head and swipes at his eyes with the back of his hand. “I’m fine. Keeping going.”

“Nah, hoss. You need a minute,” Jack argues gently. 

Mac rolls over, propping up on one elbow to face Jack. “You pushed your way into my private medical information. You asked to be here. Now you’re here and you’re telling me what I need. Jack, I’ve been dealing with this, on my own, since Mexico. I don’t need your hand holding. I need these scars to be loose enough that I can get back in the field. That’s it.”

Mac’s red rimmed eyes and damp eyelashes tell Jack a very different story, but he doesn’t comment on it. “Alright. Whatever you say, hoss.”

Mac throws a last glare at Jack and rolls back onto this stomach. Jack sighs quietly and goes back to work on the scars. At first, Mac seems to tolerate as well as he did that morning, but as Jack continues on, especially once he has to wiggle Mac’s sweats down to get to the scars on his rear, Mac’s grip seems to slip. This time Jack doesn’t stop or acknowledge it. _If Mac wants to push himself into a breakdown, then let him,_ Jack thinks. _It has to come sooner or later._

Jack digs his fingers into a scar that he knows gave Mac a lot of trouble healing. It’s on his lower back and always seemed more sensitive than the others when Jack had to clean it. Jack stretches the scar one way and then the other, feeling for the layers beneath that catch on one another. Jack can see the way Mac’s hands bunch in the sheets, and he can hear the little gasp as Jack pulls the whole scar up. 

Tears well up in Jack’s eyes. He’s hurting his kid, he’s doing this not because it’ll help — they could take breaks, talk about what Jack could do differently, something — but because Mac has something to prove. 

After holding the scar for a count of thirty, he pulls it the opposite direction and Mac twists against the bed. Jack doesn’t let go, but his stomach flips and the spam steak threatens a reappearance. 

“If you don’t call it, I’m not stopping,” Jack warns, but the threat barely carries any weight with the way his voice breaks.

Moving his hands down, Jack keeps working, and Mac’s breathing hitches in a way that has nothing to do with physical pain. It’s almost a relief to Jack, to see the end in sight, but even as he thinks that, he feels guilty. Mac’s the one actually suffering here; Jack might be uncomfortable but it’s only because of the well-earned guilt. He failed Mac in Mexico, he failed at getting Mac the medical care he needed once they got home, and he’s only able to help now that the damage is done, and then not even because Mac wanted the help, but because Jack forced it. Mac probably doesn’t even trust him to do this in the first place.

Whatever nerve fiber Jack touches must have gotten all twisted up because suddenly Mac cries out, coming off the mattress and twisting away. Jack pulls his hands back like they’ve been burned.

The memory of Mac trying to escape Jack’s cleaning ministrations in prison comes unbidden to Jack’s mind. The poor kid just wanted it all to stop, but even Jack’s helping hands forced him back down, made him endure. Despite Jack’s earlier warning, he can’t continue until Mac says so. Jack knows that it’s a double edged sword — he’s learned the hard way that he has to force some things, like seeing an actual doctor, so he can’t be hands off forever — but at least right now he can give Mac some space. 

Mac lies on the bed, his chest heaving, only the softest of noises escaping him. It’s not the ugly cry that he probably needs, but it’s a start. 

Jack carefully lays his hand on Mac’s shoulder, well clear of all the scars. “I’m sorry I didn’t stop them, Mac. You shoulda let me take it. Hell, I shoulda made you stay in medical, made you see a doctor sooner, gone with you to your appointments. I just couldn’t make you do anything you didn’t want and now here we are.”

To be fair, Jack knows that Mac also bears the responsibility of his own actions — he told the guards Jack didn’t know, he planned to leave the infirmary against medical advice, he refused to go in for the infections, and he lied about his PT — but it’s also Jack’s job to watch out for Mac when his big brain gets the better of him. And he didn’t.

Mac sniffles and rolls over, slowly coming up to sit against the headboard beside Jack. “I made my choice out there, Jack. It was the right one. You couldn’t have stopped them and if you’d tried we might not have made it out alive.”

Tears roll down Jack’s cheeks. He doesn’t deserve absolution. And Mac doesn’t deserve this. Jack swipes at his eyes and they both sit there, sniffling on Mac’s bed. 

After a minute, when it becomes clear that neither of them is going to say anything more, Jack pats Mac’s shoulder. “Come, bud. We don’t have much left. Let’s finish up.”

Mac nods gamely and moves stiffly back to the mattress. As Jack starts rubbing Mac’s scars again, he knows that Mac’s inside scars are a lot like his outside ones: holding him back from living a full life and well hidden to anyone he doesn’t trust one hundred percent. But Jack knows every little bit helps loosen their hold on Mac’s life. He’ll take whatever progress he can get.

*****

“I brought dinner from that Thai place you like,” Jack announces as he opens the front door.

Mac is sitting on the living room floor surrounded by parts of… the vitamix? Jack shakes his head because he doesn’t wanna know.

“It didn’t take that long to pick up Thai,” Mac shoots back from amidst his little pile of blender components.

Jack keeps the little mauve baggie in his hand as he heads down the hall. “Nope, sure didn’t.”

Mac lifts his head up to stare at Jack as he passes, as though with enough scrutiny Mac will be able to discern the contents of the paperbag, but Jack isn’t gonna offer up any clues for the time being.

*****

Jack’s starving and Mac asks for time to reassemble the vitamix, so they wait until those things are resolved before heading into Mac’s room for the evening round of scar work. After last night’s emotionally charged mess, the morning’s session was surprisingly less catastrophic, quiet tension notwithstanding.

But Mac’s been distant and weird all day. Jack’s long since learned that Mac can’t maintain weird and distant for very long, so chances are good that tonight will be another inside/outside therapy session. Matty had called earlier for an update which had turned into an impromptu, and somewhat awkward therapy session for Jack. He still feels like shit about all of this, but if Matty’s willing to give him some grace, then maybe he’s not a total cad. At any rate, he feels marginally better prepared for whatever gets dredged up tonight.

When no more pieces of the vitamix litter the floor and they’ve both eaten their fill, there’s no reason left to dawdle, and Mac leads Jack down the hall like he’s headed to the firing squad. Their nascent habits are still awkward and stilted — Mac stripping off his shirt in front of Jack like he’s so long avoided and Jack trying to warm some lotion between his hands so he doesn’t make Mac any jumpier than he already is.

Mac’s barely laid down on the bed when his head perks up. “What’s that smell?”

“New scar cream,” Jack informs Mac, still rubbing it between his hands.

“I thought Greg sent home a whole bag full of the stuff?” Mac says, turning to face Jack.

Jack nods and scoots closer on the bed, motioning for Mac to lie back down. “It smells like a hospital. I don’t like it. Plus, this stuff is supposed to be a lot better than the generic scar cream.”

Mac makes a thoughtful little noise, but doesn’t say more. Jack’s not really sure there’s a whole lot to say at the moment.

The new cream is smooth and light on his hands and Jack is already planning to order another tub or twelve of it by the time he’s got it warm enough to rub into Mac’s skin. As he works the cream and it gets warmer, the scent diffuses. It’s not strong, just a faint hint of jasmine, enough that no one could mistake this for something from a hospital or clinic but not so much as to give someone a headache.

Jack’s working on Mac’s upper back where most of the scars are, when Mac clears his throat.

“What scent did you pick?”

“Uh, jasmine I think,” Jack says, like he doesn’t damn well know because he smelled every tester available before settling on a scent for the cream. 

Mac nods. “I like it better.”

Well, that’s one thing Jack’s gotten right lately. Given how much he’s gotten wrong, it’s about damn time. While he works, carefully counting to thirty for each push and pull of the tissue, Jack mentally self-flagellates over his multitude of failures. It’s not what Mac would call a “healthy coping mechanism” but Mac doesn’t exactly have a leg to stand on given his recent stupidity.

Slowly, despite Jack’s unavoidably painful ministrations, Mac relaxes into the bed. Jack’s not sure if he’s finally gotten past the tension of having Jack see him like this, or if maybe the smell of the cream is enough to take the edge of his rather constant hypervigilance. Either way, it’s a nice change of pace. 

Until Jack hits that spot above Mac’s tailbone. Mac literally jumps and makes an inhuman shriek of pain before he’s awake enough to silence himself. 

“Hey, sorry. I know that one hurts a lot. Sorry,” Jack says placatingly. 

But Mac’s already crying before Jack ever gets the words out. He scrambles upright and scoots up the bed until his back is resting against the headboard and his knees are tucked into his chest. With his arms wrapped around his knees, Mac rocks gently forwards and backwards, the rasp of his hitching breath and the sounds of his sobbing are muted with the way that Mac presses his face into his knees.

“You’re safe here, Mac. You’re at home and it’s just me and you,” Jack says carefully.

Mac nods and Jack takes it to mean that this is neither a panic attack nor a flashback. Instead, it’s grief, pure and simple. Jack crawls up the bed and sits next to Mac until their shoulders are touching.

“Hey, hey, I’m right here for you, hoss. I got you. You just cry it out.”

Jack tentatively slips his arm behind Mac’s shoulders and when Mac doesn’t object he gently leans Mac against him. After a moment, Mac melts and simply allows Jack to hold him. Jack brings his other hand up to envelope Mac in maximum Jack-hugs. 

They sit like that for a while, just enjoying the closeness of the contact, neither willing to part quite yet. For Jack, it’s the absolution, the promise that Mac still trusts him, still wants his comfort after all the ways he’s failed to take care of Mac. But Jack thinks that Mac is soaking up all the comfort he never got or allowed himself once they got out of that hellhole. Mac’s like that red clay and sand desert, parched and soaking up every drop of rain it can until the excess comes rolling off in flash floods. This is Mac’s flash flood, too much care all at once and he just can’t soak it all up. But that’s alright, Jack’s not gonna run out any time soon. 

But bit by bit, the hitching and hiccoughing of Mac’s sobs levels out until there’s nothing but slow, even respiration. Jack looks down and sees that Mac is stone cold asleep. He smiles, throws a blanket over them both, and closes his eyes. He’s definitely slept in a lot worse places than next to his best friend.


End file.
